Bye, Bye Jon & Daniel!

We are sad to see two of our short-term staffers going home...Jon Palmer from Minnesota and Daniel Sohl from Germany both ended their time with us today and we will miss them both very much! Come back soon, guys!

Beach Field Trip

Last week our Child Sponsorship Program staff (Erika, Conny, Josefina and Pilar) organized a special outing for all the kids to go to the beach. They are on vacation from school right now so they wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to do something fun.

It takes about 30 minutes to walk to the beach on the other side of the island.

Games and fun...

Clinic Construcion Continues!

Last week was a lot of hard work for Jorge as he was meeting with Engineers, ordering construction materials, coordinating their delivery at a dock, renting a barge, etc... getting ready for our next big shipment of supplies to be able to continue the construcion of the clinc in Bocachica. Our staff guys and 10 other men we hired from Bocachica came to bag up the sand and gravel, load all the supplies on the barge and unload once they got to Bocachica. This is the largest load we have ever bought and shipped out.... 1 dump truck full of sand (8 tons!), 3 dump trucks full of gravel (24 tons!) (all of that adds up to over 2000 sacks that had to be filled, loaded and unloaded), 10 tons of cement, 3 tons of re-bar, 60 wood panels, a boat-load full of styrophone blocks, and the scaffolding supplies needed to build the roof. Once the barge arrived to Bocachica the community rallied around us and came out to help unload...it was such a sight to see and brought many to tears just witnessing the collaborating spirit. It´s hard to put in words what a moving experience (no pun intended) something like this is...you just had to be there. Here are a few photos from the day.

Bagging up sand.

Bagging up gravel.

Lunch break.




Victory!!!

The barge fully loaded.

Arriving to Bocachica...Guillermo and Samy.

Volunteers helping to unload.

Here you can see the long trek each one had to make from the barge all the way up to the clinic construction site. A labor of love.

Third Mini-DTS

Last week we started our third Mini-DTS..which is a 2 week discipleship course offered to people on the island as well as others from Cartagena and other towns. Marley has been directing this school and several of our staff are helping to lead it. We have 8 students.

Lucha, my sister-in-law teaching a class on Intercession.

The students performing a drama at our cell group meeting on Thursday night.

Worship time in the morning.

Purse Making Workshop

Our good friend, Elizabeth Cordoba, came for a week to give a purse-making workshop to a group of 6 women from Bocachica. The idea is for them to be able to use this as a money-making opportunity to help support their families. Elizabeth found people from her home town to donate all the supplies needed for the workshop and donated a week of her time to invest in the lives of these women.

Elizabeth and her students.

Hard at work...

...but having fun in the process.

Jenny making one of her new bags.

More Minnesotans

As I mentioned in my last post, we had an awesome team from North Heights Lutheran Church from Minnesota with us ... this group is from the same church that raised a big donation for our clinic construction. Here are a few more photos of their time with us.

Team photo on the boat.

The guys did a sand trip for the clinic construcion. This is an extremely long and grueling day that involves two trips to Cartagena to bag-up, load and unload 6 tons of sand.

The girls cheering the guys on as they unload sand.

Lucas and Mandy spent their anniversary making latrines and floors in Bocachica!

Making cement blocks.

Passing buckets of stones for floor construction.

A Short Tour

Guillermo and Pili made this video for their friends... a little tour from Cartagena to Bocachica and then around the mission. The narrating is done in Spanish but you can still check it out and figure out the gist of what he is saying, if you don´t understand the español...

4th of July with the Minnesota Team

The last 10 days we have been hosting the second annual team from North Heights Lutheran Church in Arden Hills, Minnesota. Yesterday we had a great day celebrating the 4th of July (although in all honesty is was just a coincidence that our fun day happened to fall on the 4th). The team invited all of our staff to go on a day trip to the Cocoliso resort in the Rosario Islands National Park. Here are some photos of our day...but don't get the wrong idea. The last days have not been all beach and palm trees for these guys. They have been working SO HARD...doing latrines and floors for families in the community and making cement bricks for our clinic construction as well as other things such as ministering with the elderly, youth and kids. One of their biggest challenges was bringing a load of 1 ton of fresh sand from Cartagena. This is extremely hard work and they did it with awesome attitudes! What a blessing they have been. They were a great group of young adults and they clicked so well with our staff!

Erika and Josefina on the boat heading out to the island.

Robin and Werling.

Conny and Enke.
Marley and Samy.

My friends visiting from Cincinnati, the Rains Family, were able to join us for the day!

Ben, the team leader with Robin.

Enke and Daniel.

Guillermo tackling someone...he is very mischievous. :)

Fun in the pool.

Nap time for Conny and Katherin.

Jon taking advantage of the free time and the hammocks!

Robin taking a nap while listening to his famous little radio.

Erika and Josefina in the ocean.

Goofing off.

Guillermo tackling someone else...again...see, I told you he is mischievous.

Some of the group did a hilarious synchronized swimming routine that had everyone around the pool clapping and cheering them on (and cracking up laughing) but I was in the water at the time so I didn't get a photo of that...I am hoping that one of these days the video will surface on Facebook! :)